"Dear Count: I am always true, and would rather be unsparing than untrue. The sick Mademoiselle v. F. is no longer in a condition to make a tour or profit by it. I take a lively interest in the case. However fondly I could wish to-day myself to speak consolation to you, I hope, nevertheless, after this intelligence, not to have occasion to do so.
"Your Friend."
What a dark cloud-break out of the morning redness of youth! So then the secret joy which he had hitherto nourished had been the forerunner of the dreadful blow,[[43]] the soft murmuring before the waterfall.[[44]] That his very love was to be the blazing sword which pierced through her life: O, he dwelt upon that so constantly; that pained him so! But there was no moisture in his eye; the wormwood of conscience embitters even sorrow.
When man is no longer his own friend, then he goes to his brother, who is a friend still, in order that he may softly speak to him and restore his heart and soul; Albano went to his Schoppe.
He found not him, but something else. Schoppe, namely, kept a diary about "himself and the world," wherein his friend might read whatever and whenever he wished; only he must pardon it, if he carried away with him from the reading, since it was written throughout just as if no one were to see it again,—angry slaps of the fan, and that, too, with the hard end. "Why should I spare thee any more than myself?" said Schoppe. To this thou they had come without being able to say when, chary as they generally were of this official style of the heart, this holiest dual of souls toward others; "for I thank God," said Schoppe, "that I live in a language in which I can sometimes say you, yes even (if men and monkeys are subjects for it) between every two commas, your Well-born, as well as your High-born, or Otherwise-born."
Albano found the diary open, and read with astonishment this:—"Amandus-day. A stupid and extremely remarkable day for the well-known Hesus or Hanus![[45]] I can hardly persuade myself that the poor Thunder-god deserved to walk along behind the tall Proserpine,[[46]] and at last to peep into her face, her brow, her lips, her neck! O God! If such a god had stayed now on the spot! As Pastor fido he by good fortune rose up again and went on his way. O hell-goddess, heaven-stormer of Hesus, thou hast made thyself his heaven! Can he ever let thee go?
"Afternoon. The Pastor becomes his own baiting-house, he knows not how to stay; he lives now in all streets, in order to behold his Jeanne d'Arc-en-ciel,[[47]] and suffers enough. But, Hesus, are not sorrows the thorns, wherewith the buckle of love fastens? To-day Friday[[48]] went with the Princess to the observatory. The wind is south-east-east,[[49]]—read thirteen monthlies in one hour,—Spener sees life transfigured and poetic in the shining magnifying-mirror God, as well as another man.
"Sabina's day. With the Pastor it grows worse, if I see right. He is in the way to work himself over into a billet-doux-presser, to powder himself by night in bed; and the knave already raises in the heat, like milk which is kept warm, poetic cream. Only may Heaven never grant him to fall into a rational discourse with his hell-goddess, face to face, breath to breath, and the two souls be confounded together! Verily, Flins[[50]] would snatch him away, Hesus would devour a millennial kingdom at once; I fear he would become too wild with the nectar, and too hard for me to control.
"Evening. Is it not already so far gone with the Pastor, that he has borrowed him an author out of the whining decade of the age (he is ashamed to name him), and will fain let himself be affected by the stupid stuff, while he muses upon the effect which the author had upon him in his fourteenth year. Of course he stumbles at him, in his present period of life, like a night-watchman by day; but still he cries back his cry, and has a new affection on the subject of his old. So does the declension of cornu in the grammar still smile upon me, even to this hour, because I recollect how easily and glibly in the golden moons of childhood I retained the whole of the Singular.
"Simon Jud.[[51]] Curse on it! A fair face and a false Maxd'or make, in the course of a year, a couple of hundred knaves, who differ from each other only in this, that one wishes to keep and the other to get rid of the article. Hesus frowns, and charges home upon a million rivals already. Like button- and lace-makers, or like copper- and brass-founders, two so nearly of a trade cannot let each other get on.[[52]] Right! hell-goddess, that thou hatest all men! That is, to be sure, something for the Pastor,—a wound-salve! Scioppius, the two Scaligers, and the vigorous Schlegels, &c.—"